Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Thoughts on a trade up? (Trade in not working on w

I've stayed away from giving you my thoughts because 1. I've said it all before, many, many times and 2. I've never heard M80v3. But seeing how you are so challenged by this, I'll waste some of my life to maybe make yours better.

First, if you are listening to M80v3 without "room correction", and you like them, you will be floored when you hear M100s. With XT32, you may never yearn another fronts upgrade again. I'll explain more about the "may" later.

Before I get into my opinions about M80 vs. M100, let's look at the cold, hard facts. Up first below is the listening window and sound power curve of the M80v4. The curves for the M80v3 are not available. Then next is the same for the M100v4.




Look at the curves in the region below 150Hz. Compared to the M100, the M80 response is certainly nowhere near as smooth. One of the things I've learned over the years is if you can't have smooth response in the bass, you should not even try. This is why the M2 is so great. It doesn't attempt to do what it physically can't. And this is why so many bought the Bose 601. It had no highs and no lows so it did not offend in either of those bands. Some may say "So what? Just cut off the lows and send them to the sub with extreme prejudice." It doesn't work that way. Lows still make it to the fronts. And the fronts will mess with that bass so bad that you won't be able to hear the glorious smack of drumsticks on the skin or ebullient pop from instruments.

Before I get to v3, let me tell you about v2. I had a full v2 system which included M80s. Then came the M5, M3 and M2 - all v4. I pitted them all against the M80v2. Sorry to all who own M80s but unless you are just interested in party-level SPL, all those bookshelves outperform the M80v2 in soundstage and imaging. The M5 and M2 even outperform the M80v2 in fidelity. I can live very comfortably with M2s and a sub in my 4200 cu. ft. home theater.

I've never heard v3 but based on the description from Ian below, there were changes made to the family of curves which of course would have improved the sound power and listening window over v2. In fact, in Ian's first post, a listener comments on how the soundstage and imaging improved. In v2, there really was no soundstage depth or width beyond the speaker boundaries. That appears to have been improved in v3. Also spatial resolution was improved.

https://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/ubbthreads.php/topics/311302/1

But I surmise the major changes came with v4. Andrew got his mitts in there and with the work Axiom was doing with Bryston, Axiom woke up and learned a hell of a lot of science and engineering. It learned so much it put a real cross-over in the M3 - imagine that! It used all that knowledge to build the amazing v4 line. Every one of the v4 has a soundstage which starts at the front plane of the speakers and moves "back" to the front wall. It is wide, deep, tall no matter which model you buy. The only difference between the models is the lower end extension, dynamic capability and spatial resolution. Sonic holography is there with all the models but it's the degree of resolution in that spatial image that changes as you move up. This in my opinion is as it should be. Even the M3, that I despised so much in the ti days, is a glorious piece of work now.

Now getting to the "maybe" from the beginning of my post. While the M100s will offer, without question, an incredibly realistic rendition of instruments and voices, they are big. That makes placement within the room extremely important if you want them to sonically disappear. Some have managed to make this happen like Canes but there are others. I never could. I could tell I was listening to a pair of speakers. The M5, M3, and M2 disappeared better than the M100. This is what the active LFR1100s solved for me. And I got significantly greater spatial resolution and micro and macro dynamics which I didn't think would be possible over the M100. With the actives, I cannot tell that I am listening to a pair of speakers. I have tried long and hard to find fault in that regard and simply cannot. So the M100s are now with my buddy who fell in love with them within the first 30 seconds of listening.

I hope this helps you. I am off to do some water color with my BFF/FWB.